Rational photocatalyst design for hydrogen evolution

Photocatalytic hydrogen evolution from water is a promising technology that can cleanly convert sunlight into hydrogen, which is both a carbon-free fuel and a platform chemical. Graphitic carbon nitride is a promising photocatalyst for this application, although its activity is as-yet rather low. In this work, the "defects" conventionally accepted to be important for photocatalysis have been identified. These insights were then used to design a carbon nitride photocatalyst, with such defects deliberately incorporated into the material. This designed photocatalyst exhibited an order of magnitude increase in hydrogen evolution rate over the benchmark.